burlesque, in the penny-peep-show style of Mr. Westmacott's letter on this subject eloquence :

'Here may be observed the helpless or phans sitting round the newly-dressed grave of beloved parents; while there, the tender youth may be seen ornamenting that of a darling sister; here, the aged widow mourns, under a weeping willow, the memory of a departed husband; while there, cypress wreaths,' &c. &c.-Remarks, p. 15.

well deserves greater attention than it has yet met with. He draws a very proper distinction between two classes of monuments

One, of a personal and commemorative character, and having reference to worldly honor and achievements, and therefore illustrating the importance of the individual; the other, intended to be simple records of the dead-the reminders, not of the glory and honors of a transitory life and of this world, but of that change to which all are

England will never realize the following scene which annually takes place at Mu-doomed.' (Letter, p. 5.) The former nich, and forms certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in Europe:

class he rightly thinks misplaced in a Christian Temple; and he even proposes to remove the existing statues from the Abbey 'The tombs,' says Mr. Chadwick, are decorated in a most remarkable way with flowers, to the Chapter-House. Public cemeteries natural and artificial, branches of trees, canowould provide a still better 'Walhalla.' pies, pictures, sculptures, and every conceiva-The 'sic sedebat' of Lord Bacon or Cyril ble object that can be applied to ornament or Jackson, so much more interesting to the decorate. The labor bestowed on some tombs age and to posterity than the draped nakedrequires so much time, that it is commenced two ness of Dr. Johnson, or the conventional or three days beforehand, and protected while dress of older monuments, is only inapprogoing on by a temporary roof. During the whole of the night preceding the 1st of No-priate from the site. vember, the relations of the dead are occupied We have preferred to speak of what cemin completing the decoration of the tombs ; and eteries are, and might be, rather than dwell during the whole of All Saints' Day, and the at length on the evils of the present inadeday following, being All Souls' Day, the ceme quate accommodation for burial in the metery is visited by the entire population of Mu-tropolis and other large cities, which are so nich, including the King and Queen, who go there on foot, and many strangers from dis tant parts.'-Sup. Rep. § 174.

glaring and obvious that they scarcely require any notice from us. Each family in its turn feels the inconvenience when death knocks at their own door, but few who Mr. Loudon states that 50,000 persons have not read Mr. Chadwick's report have walked round the cemetery in one day. On any idea of the extent to which the poor mid-day of the 3rd of November the more are sufferers by it. The excessive expense valuable decorations are removed, and the of funerals leads those who can only just suprest left to be the spoil of time and weather. The Christian cemetery at Pera is one of of their dead to the latest possible period; port their own life, to delay the interment the most beautiful spots in the neighbor-and the corpse is frequently kept more than hood of Constantinople, commanding a splendid view of the Bosphorus and the of six or eight, and often more, sleep, eat, a fortnight in the one room where a family Golden Horn, and forming with its mulber-work. To meet the exorbitant demand ry-trecs and cypresses, a most conspicuous which the undertaker makes on their petty land-mark. At Weimar the ducal mausogains, burial-societies have been very geneleum has opened its doors to receive the rally established among the humbler ortombs of Goethe and Schiller. At May-ders; and these are often on the very worst ence and Berlin, the cemeteries contain the public monuments of distinguished soldiers, who, officers, and men, are

Neighbors in the grave, Lie urn by urn, and touch but in their names.'

This circumstance suggests how infinitely preferable National Cemeteries, if they existed, would be to Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's for the monuments of those whose claim upon our regard is rather for public services than for private virtues.

hands of low undertakers and publicans, system, being for the most part in the who work the society for their own especial benefit. A more horrible evil has resulted from these clubs, in the neglect or poisoning by their parents of children on whose deaths a sum of money was insured for burial. There have been three or four trials from Stockport at the Chester assizes for infanticide on this motive; and though only one conviction was obtained, no one had any moral doubt of the guilt in some

'This feather stirs ; she lives!'

other cases. It is said to be a common to require such extreme precaution. Has phrase of the gossips in the neighborhood the corpse-bell at Frankfort or Munich ever of Manchester respecting a sickly infant- yet been rung? The French provincial Aye, aye, that child will not live; it is in news-writers, nearly as trustworthy as their the burial-club!' The frauds that are at- Irish brethren of the same class, are the tempted in order to obtain the burial-money, chief source of the modern tales that are are very ingenious, sometimes amusing. A told of the nailing of the coffin awakening man and his wife, residing in Manchester, its inmate of bearers being stopped by agreed that the husband should pretend to strange noises on their way to the grave— be dead, that the wife might receive the of bodies found distorted on disinterment, funeral insurance. Due notice of his death and other like horrors of posthumous life. is given the visitor for the society calls to For ourselves, we should be content with see the corpse-the disconsolate widow Shakspeare's testpoints to the dear deceased,' whose chin is tied up with a handkerchief in the attitude of death-the visitor is about to depart, satisfied with the fulfilment of his sad errand, when an awkward winking of the eye arrests his attention-he feels the pulse -'there is life in the old dog yet.' The indignant widow asseverates that there has not been a breath in him since twelve o'clock last night. Careful not to hurt her wounded spirit, the visitor hesitates-the neighbors of course assemble-the debate grows warm-till the doctor being sent for dispels doubt, disease, and death, by dashing a jug of cold water into the performer's face. The concluding part inust have been not the least ludicrous, when the man was brought up the next morning before Sir Charles Shaw, clothed in the coffin-costume of his imposture.

The

There is another evil of the present system, calling for remark. The class of sextons and grave-diggers, who in the early Church as copiate, fossarii, &c., would have borne a respectable office and character, becoming the duties imposed upon them, is notoriously become one of the most demoralized and shameless; and painfully unite in their own body the contrast of the Psalmist, being 'door-keepers in the house of the Lord,' yet dwelling in the tents of ungodliness. It would be well that the lower office-bearers of the Church were more strictly looked after we verily believe that vergers, sextons, and parishclerks, make many infidels annually. evidence given of the habits of the metropolitan grave-diggers, is too sickening to There exists among the poor of the me-repeat; some idea, however, may be formtropolitan districts an inordinate dread of ed of them by a low publication lately adpremature burial; and very terrible stories vertising A correct view of the Church of are told of bodies being found in coffins in and the Grave-diggers Playing positions that seemed to indicate that a at Skittles with the Skulls and Bones.' struggle had taken place after the lid had How unlike the ancient gentleman' of been closed. The dread of such a contin- Shakspeare-' Did these bones cost no gency is another of the causes which often more the breeding, but to play at loggats delay interment till decomposition has be- with them?' But of old, though a skull gun. A case of supposed trance lately oc- might occasionally be knocked about the curred at Deptford, where, from the ab- mazzard with the sexton's spade,' they did sence of some of the usual signs of death, not bury eight or ten corpses in the same the parents of a lad, who had died sudden- grave; nor had the operator to dig through ly, would not allow the body to be interred a mass of loathsome soil, saturated and till after the space of thirty-five days. At blackened with human remains' (Sup. Frankfort there is a singular contrivance to Rep., $156); nor were his profits inavoid the possibility of premature inter-creased and his sacrilege stimulated by the ment. Receiving-houses are appointed, in half-decayed wood and ornaments of the which the body is laid out, and a ring con- coffins he disturbed. The sale of secondnected with a lightly-hung bell is placed on hand coffin-wood has now become a petty the finger of the corpse, so that the slight-trade in some low districts of London, and est motion of the limb would give the alarm a witness describes that he detected by the to the watchers. It would seem too skep-smell the origin of the firewood in some of tical to doubt the fact that people have ever the wretched abodes that he visited. We been buried alive; but we can hardly think have just heard that one poor man has gone that in this country the danger is sufficient mad on the subject of the desecration of

graves; and that he goes about addressing they cannot alleviate, uncheered by the what audiences he can collect, mounted on faintest hope of overtaking the work that a rostrum made of a second-hand coffin, lies before them, and by little sympathy which he snatched from a grave-digger who from the uncounted wealth that dwells was about to apply it to use again. The within the sound of their church-bells-but following bit of Mr. Wild's evidence may we would beseech them to let no deadenfitly conclude this part of the subject. He ing routine of their thankless duties, no has been speaking of the effect produced by salving precedent, no cold calculation of the many funerals which take place at the mercenary underlings harden their hearts same time in large parishes, and the re- against the claims of the Christian poor to marks of the poor who are kept waiting the full participation of the last offices of outside while the service over those whose the Church. If it were not that Dissent is higher fees are paid is proceeding within ten times more crouching to wealth, and the church, half-realizing the scene of grinding to poverty still, the poor man's Crabbe, where Church' would long ago have been a mockery as applied to the Church of Eng

waiting long, the crowd retire distress'd; land. To think a poor man's bones should lie unbless'd.' The further question is asked,

'What other inconveniences are experienced in the service in other churchyards?—It is a frequent thing that a gravedigger, who smells strongly of liquor, will ask the widow or mourners for something to drink, and, if not given, he will follow them to the gates and outside the gates, murmuring and uttering reproaches.

Is that ordinarily the last thing met with before leaving the churchyards?-Yes, that is the last thing.

'That closes the scene?-Yes, that closes the scene.'

One important point, which we have left unnoticed, the moral effect of cemeteries, as compared with the close town graveyard, will come better recommended in the language of Wordsworth. Coleridge gave his sanction to these words by publishing them in his Friend:'

'I could here pause with pleasure, and invite the reader to indulge with me in conten.plation of the advantages which must have attended such a practice [wayside cemeteries]. We might ruminate on the beauty which the monuments thus placed must have borrowed from the surrounding images of nature, from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream runIt is stated in Mr. Chadwick's report, ning within sight or hearing, from the beaten that in many parishes of London the road, stretching its weary length hard by. corpses of the very poor are not brought have presented to the mind of the traveller, Many tender similitudes must these objects within the church at all, and that conse-leaning upon one of the tombs, or reposing in quently half the service is omitted. We the coolness of its shades, whether he had cannot believe this to be a prevailing cus- halted from weariness, or in compliance with tom-for it would hardly have escaped the the invitation, 'Pause, traveller,' so often found lynx-eye of the present zealous diocesan; upon the monuments. We, in and surely it would be worse than folly to modern times, have lost much of these advanurge the more frequent and strict observ- tages; and they are but in a small degree ance of the Church's general services, if counterbalanced to the inhabitants of large towns and cities, by the custom of depositing the most solemn of all were notoriously the dead within or contiguous to their places curtailed to the measure of quality or fee. of worship, however splendid or imposing may Truly indeed may it be said in this matter be the appearance of those edifices, or howthat until the Church's intentions are com- ever interesting or salutary may be the assopletely fulfilled as to her ritual, we do not ciations connected with them. Even were it know what the Church really is, nor what not true that tombs lose their monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the notice of men she is capable of effecting.' Mr. Milman occupied with the cares of the world, and too emphatically denies this defraudment of the often sullied and defiled by those cares; yet poor for his own curates. All honor be to still, when death is in our thoughts, nothing them! For the denial seems to imply the can make amends for the want of the soothcontrary general use. Too much allow- ing influences of nature, and for the absence of ance, indeed, can hardly be made for the those types of renovation and decay, which zealous and painful clergy of our over-serious and contemplative mind. To feel the the fields and woods offer to the notice of the grown metropolitan parishes, who toil on force of this sentiment, let a man only comfrom week to week amidst a mass of crime pare, in imagination, the unsightly manner in that they cannot check, and misery that which our monuments are crowded together

6

in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost grass-] less churchyard of a large town, with the still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some remote place, and yet further sanctified by the grove of cypress in which it is embosomed.'

It requires a nice hand and a reverend mind to perform this delicate task rightly, and not one spadeful of earth should be disturbed without the personal superintend ence of the clergyman or church-warden. Where this attention is paid, and the minds of the parishioners duly prepared beforehand, a most salutary reform may be effected without committing either injury or offence. Only in this, as in every church restoration or improvement, let no clerk take the measure of his own knowledge or feeling as that of his flock. It requires more pains and time than he may like to give, to bring up his people to his own standard; but he must not expect them to adopt in a day principles and practices which it may have taken him many years, and much reading and reflection, to work out for himself. The soil pared off it will be much better to heap into a steep mound than to carry beyond the churchyard; and another generation may perhaps not be afraid or ashamed to revive upon its sum

bigotry more strange and fierce than the Saracen's, has desecrated, and swept away, almost universally, from its most appropriate site.

If an English Virgil were to sing the blessings of rural life, he would hardly omit the decency and quiet of the countryman's last home; for Gray's Elegy, the verses of Wordsworth and Wilson, and the chapters of Washington Irving and Mrs. Southey, have not exhausted a subject round which the present state of feeling has thrown a new, and, we think, a holier interest. Our country churchyards are not indeed without their defects, often very grievous ones; and while our larger towns must certainly without delay provide additional burying ground, our villages must not be behind in rendering the courts of the Lord's House more worthy of His name, and the uses for which they were set apart for ever. The state of the church material, it is said, may be taken, in most parishes, as an index to the state of the church spiritual. The say-mit the ancient and simple Cross, which a ing would be more true of its precincts. The poor vicar cannot always find the means or the influence to expend many hundreds upon the fabric; but he can always forego the petty gain of letting, and The mistakes that have already been undertake the slight expense of keeping de- committed, make us deprecate any hasty cent, the churchyard. There are a few change. We have heard a churchyard simple rules which should be observed in eulogized because it was planted to harevery parish-Never to allow burial within monize with the shrubberies of the vicarsix or eight feet of the walls of the church age-and, being only separated by an in-to admit no iron palisades round tombs visible wire fence, to appear part of them. -to carry away, on the opening of each This is false in principle, and therefore in new grave, four or five wheelbarrowfuls of taste. A clear boundary should mark the earth to a distant corner of the churchyard consecrated ground, and the style of plant-to keep the turfed grave as low as possi-ing be accommodated not to the parsonage, ble, and the general surface of the church- but to the church. Straight and angular yard below the level of the floor of the walks are therefore preferable to the unduchurch. This last direction seems now lating curves of the landscape-gardening often beyond our power. Two, three, and school, and formal avenues to mixed sometimes even four feet of soil lie a con- clumps. A broad gravel path immediately tinual damper against the outside walls, and round the church, is as seemly as conveninecessitate the infliction of Arnott's stoves ent. Those who abuse the state of our and hot-water pipes within. But, consid-present churchyards are little aware of the ering the depth at which the coffins are interred, it would be quite possible to remove two or three feet of earth from the surface without in the least degree disturbing the remains below, taking care that the exact spot of every tombstone was marked that it might be replaced in the same position, and not less observant of each heaving turf beneath which,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.'

difficulty of rendering them more comely. We know of a little village in one of the midland counties, where the new vicar turned off the tenant and his sheep, took the churchyard into his own hands, and set about to make it the pride of his parish, and the pattern to the neighborhood. Pleased with the idea, he put up new gates after an old fashion, in place of the fieldgate that was there before; he planted an avenue of cypresses up to the porch, and

noble tree, as worthy now to guard God's
House without as it was deemed of old to
furnish it within; and may well represent
those trees of the Lord's planting which
flourish so greenly in the verses of the
Psalmist, and which have thrown an un-
wonted charm even into the metres of Brady
and Tate, for there is surely a simple majesty
in these lines :-

The trees of God, without the care
Or art of man, with sap are fed;
The mountain cedar looks as fair
As those in royal gardens bred.'~Ps. civ. N.

yews and cedars of Lebanon where they | zontal branches, finely contrasting with seemed most wanted; and, fond, easy man, spiral church architecture, may recommend in the pride of his heart he entered the it where other reasons fail. It is, indeed, a name and place of his plants, and the date of their planting, on the fly-leaf of the Burial-Register, and dreamt that on some future day, when he slept beneath the shade of his cedar, his successor should settle the age of that wide-spreading tree by turning to that solemn record. How a Mephistophiles would have laughed to see him planting them! The hinds stopped to admire them on the Sunday; they overgot the winter's frost and the summer's drought; nay, escaped the ravages of the stones and fingers of the village children. 'Did I not say,' remarked the vicar, as he pointed to the Virginian creeper that had reddened in the autumn sun, as it clung round the yellow sandstone arch of the porch, that if you showed confidence in the people, they would prove themselves worthy of it? Alas for the short-sightedness of human boasting, and for our fondest hopes of trees and flowers, and rustic taste! There was a slight disturbance in the village that called for the vicar's interference; and the next morning—and Sunday morning toothere lay torn up by the roots, the remnants of the 'trees he planted,' and the creepers he had trained; and which read him probably, as he walked through his ruined idols, a far better homily than the sermon he afterwards preached to his flock. It requires no little faith to persevere after such scenes as these; but though we would by no means discourage our country friends in their attempts to improve their churchyards, we would suggest to the passing traveller and the prying Camdenian a little charity in their judgment, when they lay all the blame at the parson's door.

Many are beginning sadly to overplant their churchyards. Two or three fine old trees are quite enough; and therefore a greater number of young ones should only be planted to meet accidents. After all, what can be better than the single solitary yew, which is all that most of our oldest churches have to boast of? The species of trees appropriate to a churchyard, are very limited. They should either be connected with the associations of Holy Writ, or, as Aristotle would say, xenic-that is, removed from common life. The splendid Deodara and the graceful hemlock-spruce will come under the latter head. But the tree that best unites these two qualities, is the cedar of Lebanon; and its quick growth and hori

The sycamore would remind us of Zacchæus, and the vine and the fig-tree are both sacred types. These two last are best suited for the porch, where they might replace the perfidious ivy; and if left to grow in their natural luxuriance, would seldom tempt the pilferer by their fruit. The rose of Sharon, and the wild vine of America (the Virginian creeper), might add their symbols intermixed with these; and on no account should any other flower, save those that spring up naturally from the turf, mar the solemnity of the place. Ivy, when planted at all, should be the narrow-leaved English, not the broad Irish. Loudon gives a list of some five hundred trees, shrubs and flowers, adapted for cemeteries and churchyards; but, as may be supposed from the number, it is rather a select arboretum and flora equally suited to any other purpose. His sketch of the sepulchral style, as contrasted with the pleasure-ground style of laying out a cemetery, is generally correct; but he quite overlooks a principle which we think will be found to hold good universally, that for a cemetery or churchyard the shrubs only should be spiral, the trees massy and horizontal in their branches. In both cases, evergreens are preferable. The old and genuine Scotch pine is one of the best trees for a high situation. The Lombardy poplar should be avoided, as being in too close competition with the spire. The oak is too Erastian, as well as too utilitarian a symbol. The weeping-willow is quite a modern sentimentalism, false as a Christian type, and its name (Salix Babylonica), which popularly connects it with Hebrew song, a mere pious fraud of the botanists.

The Yew demands especial notice as the church tree of England-many of the finest specimens of which are undoubtedly older